Microsoft puts Azure Kubernetes Service into high gear

Microsoft puts Azure Kubernetes Service into high gear

Microsoft has announced another expansion of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS). The new features focus on centrally managing large volumes of clusters, deploying AI models and expanding Azure Container Apps functionality.

Now, among other features, Azure Kubernetes Fleet Manager is generally available. With it, administrators can more easily centrally manage large volumes of clusters. Among other things, using a set of tools for cost optimization.

The tech giant is also making it easier to deploy AI LLMs in AKS. For this purpose, a Kubernetes AI toolchain operator has been presented. In addition to this, an extension to the Azure Container Apps platform has been released in preview. This provides support for an event-driven framework for training AI models, in addition to support for open-source Qdrant, Milvus and Weaviate vector databases.

Also released in preview is Azure Container Apps-code-to-cloud functionality that allows developers to package application code without knowing anything about containers. In addition, the Azure Container Apps landing zone accelerator has been made generally available. This should simplify setting up an Azure infrastructure.

Also announcements from KubeCon 2023

Lately, the tech giant has been working hard to expand the various capabilities of AKS. During the Microsoft Ignite event, a number of AKS features announced at KubeCon 2023 were also re-presented.

These include a new Istio service mesh add-on, a new Azure CNI Overlay for AKS update that adds support for both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses, more capabilities of the Azure Container Storage service for AKS and expanding the Azure Monitor service for more telemetry of Node.js and Python applications.

Also read: Kubernetes 1.20 available on Microsoft’s Azure Kubernetes Services